Most EHS leaders (61%) believe their current safety metrics, such as Total Recordable Incident Rate, TRIR, are only partially useful in identifying the real drivers of serious injuries, according to The What Works Institute and Evotix 2025 Executive Roundtable and EHS Strategy & Innovation Survey.

More than half of the survey respondents came from companies with more than 1,000 people – companies thought to have the highest level of EHS expertise and resources. If these “best of the best” companies say the way they measure safety performance does not fully capture the most serious workplace risks, where does that leave the preponderance of small and mid-size companies that often lack a full-time EHS leader? TRIR still dominates performance dashboards in these companies – indeed in most companies (can you think of a widely accepted alternative measure?) – and it has for more than half a century since the OSH Act of 1970 institutionalized the definition of recordable incidents.

No answer to the “why” question

TRIR gives you a rate of injury without explanation. It is a statistic devoid of meaning or context. If it goes down year-to-year, the inference is the EHS program is succeeding. If it goes up, the EHS program is somehow failing. Especially in the millions of workplaces without notable EHS resources or expertise, the drivers of success or failure are unknown and unexplored. 

EHS performance insight has for more than 50 years largely been left to a “thumbs up, thumbs down” simple and after-the-fact indicator. This reflects the EHS field’s lack of collaboration and cohesion needed for innovation. It is especially true in small and mid size companies that do not network, hold professional association memberships and attend EHS conferences. When it comes to EHS, many workplaces are island of isolation – silos unto themselves.

The What Works Institute/Evotix survey states, “Despite broad recognition of these shortcomings, inertia and external pressure (from regulators, industry bodies, investors, and legacy incentive schemes) keep traditional measures in place, fostering what one roundtable participant called “performance theater”- managing the optics of injury rates rather than the reality of serious-risk control.

Promising developments

The survey sponsors are optimistic that change is coming, that safety measurement is being modernized specifically around exposure, readiness and learning. Specifically, the survey and roundtable uncover these indicators that  more directly reflect risk: tracking how often workers encounter high-energy or high-hazard tasks; whether risk controls in place are effective (such as number and quality of confined space entries and lockout verifications); monitoring high-potential near misses and timely corrective actions; using surveys, interviews and pulse tools to gauge trust, worker engagement and the safety climate; the quality of investigations, audits and training; and indicators for fatigue and stress (such as overtime) to assess wellbeing and psychosocial risk.

Many of these practices are in the early stages of development and application and are unevenly adopted, the survey notes. And again, most survey respondents are large companies. What are the odds that these new metrics are being applied in smaller companies without EHS staffing or substantial knowledge?

The report states “the EHS field is at an inflection point” to determine if metrics will be improved to identify what truly drives risk and serious injury. That less than one in five (19%) mostly large companies surveyed report their metrics indeed closely track the true drivers of risk shows the formidable challenge and degree of change needed across all workplaces to better measure and understand the drivers of safety performance.